HE was one of TV’s great survivors, moving from one job to another with his professional aplomb intact, whenever “new brooms” swept in bringing change.

For decades, John Stapleton, who has died at the age of 79, reported and presented news on TV in a variety of programmes and became a familiar face across the generations.

John Stapleton tragically passed away at the age of 79 this morning
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He famously presented Watchdog alongside his wife Lynn Faulds Wood
Credit: BBC

He became a familiar face after presenting a host of shows across his glittering career
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Yet, behind his polished versatility, he always felt like he had something to prove.

“I was lucky enough to survive in television for 45 years, but I went through my entire career thinking they’d find me out one day,” he said in a 2020 newspaper interview.

“A lot of it stemmed from being a working-class lad from the North of England who didn’t go to university and was surrounded by extremely clever people – particularly in television.

“You could say Impostor Syndrome is a good name for it and I prepared for things studiously to try to compensate.”

He remained resilient during tough personal times that saw his fellow broadcasting wife, Lynn Faulds Wood, battle cancer and ill health before dying of a stroke in 2020 and his own diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease at the age of 78.

Born 24 February 1946 in the Pennine village of Diggle, Oldham in Lancashire, his father Frank was secretary of the local co-operative and his mother June a part-time primary school teacher.

John attended Diggle Primary School, Hulme Grammar in Oldham and St John’s College of Further Education, Manchester, where he took his ‘A’ levels.

It was seeing Michael Parkinson present the local current affairs programme, Scene at 6.30, on Granada Television that inspired him to become a TV journalist.

“I worked out that, like him, I needed to work in newspapers first.

“When I told my mum and dad that I wanted to be a journalist, they were really supportive even though we’d never known anyone who had gone into the media before.

“That was them all over – they always encouraged me and were there for me whenever I needed them.”

On leaving school at 17 he started work as a trainee reporter on the Eccles and Patricroft Journal.
Watch John Stapleton’s final TV appearance just months before his sad death aged 79 after Parkinson’s battle
Three years later he joined the Oldham Evening Chronicle before moving on to the Daily Sketch, first in Manchester and then in London.

His first job in television was at Thames Television as a 25-year-old researcher and script writer on This Is Your Life, presented at the time by Eamonn Andrews.

On the way home from work he would often stop for a drink with a friend at a pub in Richmond and it was here that he met Lynn Faulds Wood in 1971.

Lynn was a teacher who was supplementing her income at night by working as a barmaid.

“I fancied her right away,” he recalled. “She looked like Sandie Shaw and I asked her out the second time I saw her.”

They married in 1977 and it was a present of lingerie that John bought her that changed her professional course.

“She went into journalism and became interested in consumer affairs after I bought her a nightie in the wrong size and she took it back and there was a kerfuffle over her rights,” said John.

In their early days together, John became quite emaciated, which concerned Lynn and, belatedly John himself.

“I had got it into my head that being thin was smart,” he said. “I thought it would help me to be a television journalist.

“I’d left home, so there was no mum to say: ‘You must eat your dinner.’ I was living in a flat, working erratic hours on the old Daily Sketch, so it was easy to more or less stop eating.

“The pounds rolled off but I suddenly saw myself in the mirror one day and I looked frightening. I’m 5ft 11in and I was nine stone.”

John credited Lynn’s cooking and a healthier diet to him putting on a healthier two stone.

It was only decades later, in 2000, when interviewing actress Tracy Shaw, then in Coronation Street, about her battle with anorexia that he realised she was describing the same symptoms he had in his 20s.

During the first half of the 70s he worked as a reporter on the Thames Television regional news magazine show Today and felt instantly at home.

“From the moment I started, I was addicted to the thrill of being part of a live programme,” he recalled.

He joined the BBC Nationwide programme in 1975, first as reporter, and then one of the main presenters from 1977 until 1980.

While on Nationwide he carried out major investigations into such issues as council corruption in South Wales and protection rackets in Northern Ireland.

He also compered a number of one-off light entertainment shows for the BBC, including the Miss United Kingdom beauty pageant.

The iconic husband and wife presenting duo in January 1987
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John appears on ITVs ‘Lorraine’ in April 2021
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John (right) and his son, Nick, speaking on his diagnosis with Parkinson’s last October
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From 1981 to 1983 he was a correspondent on the BBC’s Panorama and Newsnight, reporting from trouble spots such as the Middle East, El Salvador and Argentina during the Falklands War.

A switch to morning broadcasting came when he joined TV-am as a reporter and then Good Morning Britain before teaming up with his wife.

He joined Lynn to present the early evening consumer programme Watchdog, until it came to an end in 1993.

By now a seasoned broadcaster, he bounced straight back by returning to ITV to front the live morning show, The Time, The Place, in which he travelled around the country, talking to studio audiences about various topics.

Just a few days before his 52nd birthday, he was told by the new head of ITV daytime television, Diane Nelmes, that she was bringing the programme to an end.

“I was enormously relieved and gratified that within 24 hours of losing my job, three offers had come my way,” he said. “That did a lot to boost my confidence.”

One of those offers was to co-host GMTV’s The News Hour with Penny Smith, where he also stood in for main presenter Eamonn Holmes.

He also anchored many major news stories. Among them, the war in Kosovo, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami in South East Asia and Pope John Paul II’s funeral in Rome as well as four American elections.

But when asked what was his most nerve-wracking job, he would drily say, “Hosting Miss UK in 1977. God, it was terrifying. You try interviewing a load of beauty queens who all want to travel and see world peace.”

John and Lynn moved to West London in 1984 where they lived in a large Victorian house and in 1987 gave birth to their son, Nick, who was to follow in their footsteps on TV, becoming best known for BBC1’s Scam Interceptors.

The home was full of antique china that Lynn liked to collect, along with wooden ducks – John’s choice of bric-a-brac.

“I’ve got about 60 wooden ducks,” he said. “I’m not sure how it started, but it’s become a hobby and friends bring them back from far-flung places.”

An avid supporter of Manchester City like his father and grandad before him, his passion for the club began when his father took him to watch them play Blackpool in the 50s, in which the legendary Stanley Matthews played for the opposition.

A season ticket holder, whenever he could, he would travel to Manchester to watch them play.

Lynn learned she had cancer of the colon on 22 February 1991 and needed immediate surgery.

She was 41, John was 44 and Nick, three. The operation was a success and she got the all-clear in 1996. It led to her campaigning to make people more aware of the early symptoms.

“When Lynn started campaigning there were people in our business who couldn’t bring themselves to say the word cancer,” said John.

Lynn would have none of that, of course. She saved thousands of lives. She was still doing it right at the end. She would always find some ray of hope.”

John and Lynn had been married for 43 years until her death in 2020 from a stroke aged 72.

In 2004, he was made the Royal Television Society’s News Presenter of the Year.

The honour was awarded to him following his work on GMTV covering the 2003 war in Iraq and interviews he conducted with political party leaders including then-Prime Minister Tony Blair.

It was, he says, his proudest professional achievement, adding: “I had never won as much as a sausage and it was great for GMTV and the populist journalism we present.”

In 2010, he joined the newly established ITV Breakfast programme Daybreak as their Special Correspondent and was also a part-time presenter.

When Daybreak came to an end four years later, he was part of the replacement programme, Good Morning Britain where he remained until July 2015.

He continued to work, standing in for radio presenters on LBC and occasionally appearing on TV and writing for newspapers.

In October 2024, he announced on BBC One’s Morning Live that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in April.

In a video clip, sitting alongside his son, Nick, he said, “Speaking is how I’ve earned my living for the best part of 50 years.

“It’s very frustrating sometimes, particularly when people are constantly saying to you: ‘Sorry, what did you say?’ And you have to repeat yourself, time and time again.

“I am fairly pragmatic about the prospect of this getting worse. I try to remain positive, because what’s the point of not being?”

Nick said that, while his father’s diagnosis has been “really upsetting”, it did not come as a surprise because his grandmother also had the degenerative condition.

Speaking about his mother, John said: “I witnessed my mother’s decline from this lively, ebullient, outgoing lady to a lady who is fairly fragile.

“One of the practical problems she faced initially was her inability to do things like open a can of beans or peel a potato. Believe it or not, I’m having the same problem, to some extent, myself right now.”

Good Morning Britain’s Richard Madeley had an emotional message for his old friend.

He said: “I used to watch you on Nationwide, that’s when I first became aware of you as a presenter and you inspired me to get into television.”

John, a long-term patron of Parkinson’s UK, was touched by the public reaction the video clip received.

“It wasn’t about getting John Stapleton back on the telly, honestly!” he laughed. It was about increasing awareness of Parkinson’s and encouraging people to talk.

“Since that film went out, I’ve been absolutely inundated with offers of dinner and lunch. It’s been charming.

“As long as I can, I’ll keep going.”

Lynn and John at Pratham UK’s Indian Summer Garden Party at The Chelsea Conservatory in June 2009
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Susanna Reid and Stapleton present ‘Good Morning Britain’ in 2015
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Stapleton (right) with Jeremy Paxman on the set of BBC show ‘Breakfast Time’ in 1988
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